The Turkish People Have Spoken

It comes as no surprise that social networking sites  in Turkey have spent the last month largely occupied with June 7’s parliamentary elections and their surprising results. After 13 years of rule, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) received only 40.86% of the votes, meaning that it does not have a parliamentary majority and will be forced to form a coalition government. These results show that the Turkish people oppose the concentration of power in the hands of a single authority; effectively, they said “no” to the presidential regime that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been striving to create, which would concentrate extensive authority in his hands, on a historically unprecedented level in Turkey.

The achievement of the largely Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which won 13.12% of the vote, played a key role in the failure of the AKP. For the first time in its history, the HDP succeeded in passing the electoral threshold (the highest in the world, 10%), because it campaigned as a political party rather than a list of independent candidates, as it had in the past. However, it is presumptuous to attribute the failure of AKP solely to the Kurdish party; another critical factor in the Turkish political system is the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) which recorded an astonishing jump from 52 mandates to 80 mandates (16.29%). Conversely, the largest opposition party, the secular Republican People's Party (CHP), was unable to increase its power and even lost 1% of its parliamentary seats, apparently to the Kurds.

Echoes of the election campaigns and elections themselves were very evident on Turkish social media. The tension in the public and the bitter competition between various players led to the creation of diverse hashtags intended to influence public opinion. Alongside calls reminding people to vote: “I love my country, I’m going to the polls,”[1] and tweets explaining how the voting process works,[2] there were also attempts to defraud and deceive. One example was the poster distributed by CHP supporters that called on AKP voters to express their disapproval of the secular party by marking their ballot with an “X” under its symbol, in addition to the standard stamp (“evet,” yes) indicating their vote for AKP.

The supporters of CHP had hoped that this would cause ballots cast for AKP to be disqualified. This deception is indicative of the disdain that the “enlightened secular” people have for AKP voters, who they consider to be gullible and dim-witted. This patronizing attitude has only served to strengthen the ruling party over the years, and this recent effort shows that the CHP has not learned the lessons of previous elections but rather continues using a divisive discourse.[3]

The extreme tension surrounding these elections, in part a result of the forgeries at some polling stations during the municipal elections in March 2014, caused the Turkish public to be particularly alert on the morning of Election Day. Many users reported on social media that they had observed vehicles without license plates parked in schools that were serving as polling stations.

These users called on voters to puncture the cars’ tires so they could not be used to smuggle ballot boxes from the polling places. This phenomenon is further testimony to the lack of confidence prevailing among the Turkish public and the deep divisions in its ranks.[4] Although the campaign period officially ends a day before the elections, SNS continued to serve as a stormy platform for electioneering even on Election Day itself, as attested by the many new hashtags created over the course of the day.[5] Particularly conspicuous was the negative campaign mounted by supporters of the MHP and the ruling AKP against the Kurdish HDP. The former called on voters to ensure the Kurdish party remains outside of Parliament and contended that voting for it was the equivalent of treason, while supporters of the AKP criticized the HDP’s chairman Selahattin Demirtas for the campaign he waged against the Directorate of Religious Affairs.[6]

Publication of the actual election results caused a commotion in Turkish society and on social media as well. Voters for the various opposition parties joined together around victory slogans, especially “The people said ‘stop’” and “The people have spoken’” which were used to emphasize opposition to the excessive centralization of power under President Erdogan and the presidential system he has been promoting.[7] Conversely, supporters of the ruling party called on its leaders to “Stand strong and not bend,” a familiar slogan used previously when Erdogan encountered opposition both domestically during the Gezi Park riots and corruption scandals of 2013, as well as in the international arena, particularly with regards to friction with Israel.

In the Israeli context, it should be noted that unlike the presidential elections in August 2014 (in the aftermath of Operation Protective Edge), Israel was not a central issue in this election campaign. Despite this, when the results were published, supporters of AKP uploaded to social media Israeli responses.. Most of the attention was devoted to the comments of former President Shimon Peres and his expression of happiness with the results, and to the caricature by Shlomo Cohen in Israel Hayom, which showed a Turkish flotilla running aground on the Kurdish party. As if to demonstrate to the Turkish public the “mistake” it had made by voting as it did, supporters of AKP uploaded a mistranslation of the headline “Turkey said ‘No’ to Erdogan” that ran in Israel Hayom as “Cries of joy in Israel, We are returning to Istanbul! Users expressed their anger over the election results and made it clear that an outcome received happily in Israel is bad for Turkey.

The Turkish election campaigns and its aftermath created a distinct tension in the country, as reflected by social media. It should be stated, though, that the manner in which discourse was conducted and the high level of political awareness demonstrated by the public proves that Turkey remains a functioning democracy in which the Turkish people make the rules of the game, despite the criticism leveled by the Western world. Similarly, the election results show that in order to maintain the parliamentary system and the current character of the state, people were willing to come out and vote and say “no” to the excessive centralization that Erdogan has been championing in recent years, despite the potential risk to the Turkish economy that may be posed by the instability of the coalition government which will soon take shape.